


a hard matter

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: The Lady of Gondor [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Dúnedain - Freeform, F/F, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, First Meetings, Gondor, Implied Relationships, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Psychic Abilities, Royalty, kingship, mutual respect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 21:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20396407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: With no second son to spend, Denethor led his men into battle himself, and fell in battle himself. Now, his daughter Fíriel—all that remains of the House of the Stewards—is left to decide Gondor's future.





	a hard matter

> _A murmur of astonishment ran through all the ring of men. Some cried aloud: 'The sword of Elendil! The sword of Elendil comes to Minas Tirith! Great tidings!' But Faramir's face was unmoved._
> 
> _'Maybe,' he said._
> 
> —LOTR, "The Window on the West"

In her heart, perhaps, Fíriel knew what must happen. Her people gladly welcomed the Lord Aragorn for his victories, his lineage, his service, but nevertheless he came out of the shattered waste of Arnor and not Gondor. When the euphoria faded, in a year or five or ten—what then?  
  
The Stewards, for their part, could claim no more royalty than any other great Númenórean house; at this point they all carried a few scarce drops of Anárion’s blood in their veins. By birth, her family held only north Ithilien. Yet they had been sovereigns over Gondor for centuries, liked for the most part, resolute keepers of the kingdom when kings failed. Even now men admired and mourned Denethor, their last valiant Steward. If he had lived—  
  
He had not lived, and that was Fíriel’s doing. At the end of her strength, she had sustained the Lady Éowyn, slayer of the Witch-king, and abandoned her father to his cold death. By her own failure, she was the last of the house of the Stewards. The loremasters had long counted them as heirs of Anárion in name as well as authority, and so: last heir of Anárion as well. Even her namesake, a truer heir by far and equally bereft of father and brother, never suffered that blow.  
  
Aragorn had already been joyously compared to her brother Boromir, the mighty king Rómendacil, inevitably Elendil. Yet now, she thought before them all of Arvedui, his own ancestor. Arvedui whose failure Aragorn redeemed, Arvedui who lost the palantíri where Aragorn recovered one, who lost Arthedain where Aragorn would undoubtedly restore it. Arvedui who married the daughter of Gondor’s lord, his only surviving child.  
  
_Fíriel._  
  
Yes, she should have known. Had her mother known? Had Mithrandir, assuring her on the eve of the Pelennor that the blood of Númenor did not flow in her for nothing? Had Aragorn?  
  
She remembered with perfect clarity how weakened she’d been in the Houses of Healing, so exhausted and unsteady that she might have fallen if not for Imrahil hastening to her side. In her splintered vision Aragorn shone like a star. Like Eärendil. And frail as she must have seemed in that moment, he said: _You are a woman of staunch will, lady, to have contained the poison of the Nazgûl so far. Men live who else would have died, whose lives I swear shall now be preserved. For I too am a healer, and I say to you: it may be that you were born for this hour, Fíriel daughter of Denethor._  
  
She did not see him again until after the triumph at the Morannon. As she walked with Éowyn in her mother’s garden, she caught a flicker of thought; Aragorn stood at one end of the garden in the gear of a Dúnadan of the North, looking very much like any other Dúnadan of the North. A good enough disguise in Minas Tirith, she supposed.  
  
He hesitated, uncertain for a victorious captain of war. And Éowyn, noticing him a moment later, flushed. Fíriel might have rejoiced at her sudden animation, but she—did not. Still, Éowyn looked at him with less of a woman’s love and more of a young soldier’s admiration. For his part, Aragorn responded to Éowyn’s greeting with awkward cordiality, discomfort behind the eyes.  
  
“You know the Lady Fíriel, I think?” said Éowyn.  
  
“Yes, we met in the Houses of Healing,” he replied. “If you remember, lady?”  
  
“I do,” said Fíriel, with a flicker of trepidation.  
  
They looked at one another, minds full of stars and crowns and scepters. The crown of Gondor; the rod of the Stewards. She’d all but made her decision, none other possible in the circumstances; but still she had her duty.  
  
He quickly said that he did not mean to interrupt, and left with more grace than he had entered.  
  
“I imagined he would make a more majestic entrance into the city,” said Éowyn.  
  
Fíriel smiled. Sometimes Éowyn seemed too old and tired for her age; and sometimes, very young.  
  
“Elessar has not entered the gates,” she replied. “That was only the Lord Aragorn, a leader of our kin from afar.”  
  
Éowyn looked sharply at her. “Is he not the king?”  
  
“Not yet,” said Fíriel. The weight in her gut grew still heavier. He had not slipped into the city for nothing. But she dared not dwell on it.  
  
Later, after Éowyn reluctantly retired to rest, Fíriel found Aragorn waiting for her—as she more than half-expected.  
  
“I do not wish for strife in Gondor,” he said abruptly. “The Enemy has perished, but other foes live. After so many years, even the most peaceful have little love for us.”  
  
She considered him. Despite her height, she had to look up; he stood over two rangar. Some part of her would have preferred to hold this conversation in the hall of the kings, Fíriel sitting on her father’s chair, holding the white rod. Denethor had granted her all the authority of the Steward before his death, and in these uncertain days, nobody had felt the need to wrest it out of her hands. She suspected that nobody had realized it included the judgment of royal claims. The Council might ignore that; the people would not.  
  
Aragorn would not.  
  
“They have little love for—us?” she said. “The peoples of the west?”  
  
“Gondor,” said Aragorn, voice firm.  
  
“You count yourself a man of Gondor?”  
  
His grey eyes were steady. “I am a man of many places, lady. I was born in Eriador and reared in Imladris. I have explored Middle-earth, west and north, south and east. I fought in Rohan for a time, and Gondor a longer time. My home, as near as I could call it, has been the North. But the North-kingdom fell long ago. Fornost, Annúminas, the great cities of my forefathers lie in ruins. My people shrink with every generation. We look south as well as west, not only to the memory of Númenor downfallen, but to the heart of living Númenor.”  
  
Fíriel caught her breath. For all her intended impartiality, the words—studied yet earnest—sparked in her mind, long-cherished images flaring up. Minas Tirith restored, full of life and beauty, a peaceful queen once more. The flag of Elendil snapping in the breeze, the White Tree in flower. The silver crown …  
  
Where would she be, in that splendid future? What would become of her people, not only as admiring crowds, but as they lived from day to day? What of_ Gondor?_  
  
Forcing herself to caution, she said, “You intend to reunite the Dúnedain?”  
  
“Yes.” He smiled a little. “They already mingle in Cormallen.”  
  
“After a battle, a great victory,” said Fíriel. “That is one thing. It is another to dwell together in harmony, under the same government, the same king. For that is what you intend, is it not?”  
  
Aragorn paused. Then his smile widened to something more open and frank. “Yes. I have from my youth.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
“Many decades.” Correctly interpreting her expression, he said, “Over sixty years.”  
  
She should have guessed that. He had grey at his temples, faint signs of age over his face, even as he shone bright in her mind. Her father had been sixty before he showed such signs, and prematurely aged—Aragorn would be seventy, eighty, perhaps more. She did not care how much more.  
  
“Why did you wait?” She knew, of course.  
  
“The Kinstrife destroyed enough at Gondor’s height. What might another do to us now?”  
  
He had good sense, or good principles—hopefully both. Few, even of his blood, would have the resolve to watch and wait for decades on end, living as nothing more than a charismatic captain at best. There was wisdom as well as patience in that, a sense of proper significance. He had his ambitions, but he had not been willing to sacrifice Gondor’s interests to them, nor the good of all peoples who fought against Mordor.  
  
“Naturally it would have been ruinous,” said Fíriel. She inhaled. “Let me say, my lord, that the White Rod is a sacred charge. I will not break it lightly.”  
  
“Who is to say that you must break it?”  
  
She started. Then she looked away, unsure of her reason for doing so: unwilling to see, or to be seen?  
  
Did he mean to retain the Stewardship, if—when—_if_ he became king? As it had become by Mardil’s time? Settled on a great lord like Imrahil, or even delaying for a son of Fíriel’s own? Or was he thinking of what it had been for the ancient kings, something to pass from one elderly advisor to another? Húrin or Forlong?  
  
No, Forlong was dead.  
  
It did not signify for now. Whatever Aragorn intended for the Stewardship, she remained the last of the Húrinionath, her father’s viceroy-heir, and this final duty lay with her.   
  
“Tell me of your travels,” she said at last.  
  
Aragorn paused, then complied. For the next hour, he talked of wide lands throughout Eriador, Rhûn, Harad, painting pictures with a few well-chosen words. He knew the world better than any man of Gondor, as a king should. But she, who knew well how to hide truth behind more truth, listened too for what he did not say.   
  
He talked of his exploits as Thorongil and his acquaintance with her mother, but not of Denethor, whom he must have known much better. He talked of the sights and ways of the strange far lands he’d seen, but not of what he had done there. He talked of the beauty of Rivendell, the precious lore, the evenings full of Elven-song, the wisdom of Master Elrond, but not of how it survived the onslaughts of orcs.  
  
Fíriel listened and said little.  
  
Afterwards, Aragorn—seeming to know by instinct that he had said all that might be of use—slipped away as invisibly as he had snuck in, headed back to the celebrations at Cormallen. Fíriel watched him go, then sat on a bench near a young olive-tree.   
  
For another hour she remained very still, the light breeze on her face as crisp and clean as the wind off the sea at Dol Amroth. She weighed one thing against another, precedent against victory, honour against expediency, her slain father against her living uncle. If Boromir had lived, she began to think wistfully: but no. If not slain by orcs in the defence of the small and helpless, he would have fought on the Pelennor. Perhaps Denethor would never have ridden to battle, then, and this terrible burden would not lie on her shoulders. Denethor would have no doubts.  
  
Fíriel was a student of lore above all else. As always, she sought refuge in the Stewards’ archives, searching for the answer she sought, or at least the question. There, the Council’s decision from a millennium ago, dutifully copied and re-copied through the long years. It had been written in Quenya, thank heavens; Edhellen changed with the passing years, but the high-Elven never did.  
  
She read the brief words over and over. Pelendur had not been a verbose man. Although he honoured the Princess Fíriel for her lineage and character—Arvedui was not yet king—she could not, as a woman, inherit the crown. Still less could her husband inherit the crown through her. As for his claim as heir of Isildur, Isildur had relinquished Gondor, and consequently all claim to it for himself and his heirs, to the line of Anárion. A second letter from Arvedui, its copies neatly placed with the first, contested the argument. Women had inherited the crown of Númenor, even if the law had not been observed in Middle-earth, and moreover Isildur never intended the permanent separation of the kingdoms.  
  
Isildur, as far as she could tell, had not documented what he meant at all. Nor had any of her scattered visions brought it to her. They could debate only accounts of accounts of what Isildur might have said.  
  
_Relinquished._  
  
There lay the crux of it all, she thought. By all record his three eldest sons had been present at the time; he could just as easily have made one of them king in Gondor, bound the kingdoms more closely. Instead he chose his nephew Meneldil. That suggested to her mind that he never intended Gondor for his heirs. Still, it was well established that he left to take up the high kingship, and not merely a separate kingship in Arnor. It might very well be that he intended his heirs to be high kings over Arnor and Gondor, Anárion’s as kings of Gondor under them. It could be.  
  
Relinquished, relinquished, relinquished.  
  
Fíriel rubbed her eyes. Both arguments had merit under pure law. At the time, however, Arvedui weakened his own position. He primarily rested his claim on Princess Fíriel, by appeal to the law of Númenor; but Tar-Aldarion’s law granted the sceptre to royal heiresses, not their husbands. Indeed the history of Númenor reflected quite poorly on men who claimed it in the name of their wives, and even his own kingdom did not accept ruling queens. No, she could not question Pelendur’s decision there, as far as the law went. The claim from Isildur was the stronger by far.  
  
Aragorn, as far as she knew, presented himself only as heir of Isildur, though of course he must be likewise descended from Princess Fíriel. In the male line too, not through the daughters the princess brought back to Gondor. But that descent remained the weaker claim; he made none of Arvedui’s mistakes. And he was the triumphant captain who had led Gondor to victory as well as a claimant of royal blood: Eärnil as well as Arvedui.  
  
Fíriel pushed the parchment away. Did she seek knowledge, truly? Or justification for expediency?  
  
Oh, what did it matter? She’d known all along the choice that must be made, for Gondor’s sake. As Aragorn had said, not all their enemies had died on the Pelennor and before the Morannon. Even now they could afford no internal squabbles; and in this hour they needed a great captain as her brother had been, whatever they chose to call him. Precedent was against it. But the law itself could go either way. She, last of Pelendur’s line, was in a better position than any to overturn his decision. Or at least to strongly recommend doing so, backed by her people’s love for Aragorn, and for her.  
  
A formless idea tugged at her mind; she dismissed it, preoccupied by the needs of the present. Then she returned to her family’s private apartments high in the tower, where she had locked away the White Rod, after Denethor first bestowed it upon her in full sight of the Council. They might need the reminder.  
  
Fíriel hesitated, but only for a moment. She unlocked the door to her father’s rooms, rod in hand. In earlier days she would never have dared to breach his sanctuary unless summoned. But he rested in Rath Dínen now, and would never return.  
  
The room looked very much as she remembered it, starkly spare, but airy and full of light. Denethor, always tidy, otherwise left little of himself; but then, he had not expected to return. Fíriel took a deep breath, then crossed the room to the small door at the end of it. She had never penetrated further into the tower than this.  
  
She turned the only key she did not recognize into the lock. Quietly opening the door and closing it behind her, she climbed the winding stairs upwards, skirts trailing after her. There was very little dust; her father, as all the City well knew, came this way often.  
  
Here she found neatly stacked books, neatly rolled scrolls, in more languages than she could name, though most seemed to be high-Elven and Edhellen. Dead torches still remained on the walls, candles stacked on the shelves—unnecessary for now, with another long window letting in a warm flood of sunlight. None of these, however, drew her attention so much as something large and round set on a tall pedestal before the window, draped in cloth.  
  
She did not need the gifts of Númenor to feel a thrill of alarm at the sight. Yet she stepped near to it, as if inexorably drawn, and then nearer still.  
  
The people of Minas Tirith, Fíriel not excepted, had long known that the Steward wrestled with the Enemy from here. An impossible task, on the face of it. Yet, while the struggle aged and wearied him, it did not defeat him; Denethor had lived and died as his own man. Fíriel prayed she would be able to say the same, whatever she chose. Men said that Fíriel favoured him; she hoped so. She hoped that she had inherited his unconquerable spirit along with his height and features.  
  
He would say that she must choose quickly. And she must stand by her choice. Yes, she would be as strong as her father.  
  
Fíriel pulled the cloth away, and gasped, though she had half-expected what she found.  
  
It was, unmistakably, a Seeing-stone of Númenor. The Anor-stone had not been lost! Her family must have passed it down, father to son, and occasionally to daughter. Her father must have—_this_ was how he had wrestled with the Enemy, wrenching the stone to his control. And he must have succeeded, at least in part; he would not have done it without gain. This was how he had seen so much and so far, coupled with his powers of mind.   
  
And now it was hers.   
  
For awhile, anyway—a short while. Fíriel stared down at the globe, thinking of all the days of the past, of the light so often flickering at this window. Of her father’s life and death, and Aragorn, and oddly, of Éowyn.  
  
She reached for the _palantír._

**Author's Note:**

> 1) _at this point they all carried a few scarce drops of Anárion’s blood in their veins_: in POME, Tolkien says that the Stewards undoubtedly had some share of Anárion's blood, though not by direct (i.e., male-line) descent. I interpret that as suggesting not that the House of Húrin was unique in descent from Anárion, but that a house like theirs would _inevitably_ descend from him somewhere along the line.
> 
> 2) _her namesake, a truer heir by far_: Fíriel is named, in-story and out of it, for Princess Fíriel of Gondor, sister of Prince Faramir (presumably Faramir's namesake in canon). The previous Fíriel was the daughter of King Ondoher and thus a direct male-line descendant of Anárion, making her a "truer heir" in the dynastic sense.
> 
> 3) _Fíriel listened and said little_: Of Denethor, Tolkien says in the Appendices: _He said little. He listened to counsel, and then followed his own mind_.
> 
> 4) _She weighed one thing against another_: One of the main ideas underlying this 'verse is that Denethor going to battle = Faramir/Fíriel doesn't fall under the Black Breath = she's not healed by Aragorn = she doesn't have the mystical kingship awakening = she's operating off of Faramir's original attitude in canon and has to make the call based on available evidence.
> 
> 5) _Edhellen_: "Elvish" in Sindarin. Sindarin is almost always called "the Elven-tongue" or something similar in LOTR. Tolkien describes Gondorian Sindarin as a distinct dialect due to its usage in Gondor, but nevertheless largely static as an acquired language of the nobility, which is a bit difficult to square with the depiction of random Gondorians shouting in Sindarin at each other in streets when they see Pippin. Quenya is basically Middle-earth Latin.
> 
> 6) _Arvedui was not yet king_: one of the weirder details of Arvedui's attempt to claim the throne of Gondor is that he partially based his claim on his position as Heir of Isildur, but he actually wasn't the heir yet. 
> 
> 7) _Isildur had relinquished Gondor_: This is the official Gondorian view. Of Isildur's actual decision, the Appendices simply say that Isildur delivered Gondor to Anárion's son Meneldil. The Silmarillion says that Isildur "forsook the South-kingdom," which I imagine is the basis for Gondor's interpretation, though it could be read multiple ways.
> 
> 8) _Indeed the history of Númenor reflected quite poorly on men who claimed it in the name of their wives_: the kings in question were villainous usurpers.


End file.
